Virtue Ethics and Confucian Ethics

This essay focuses on the unity of several virtues in pre-Qin Confucians. Confucius maintains the proper application and coherence of such virtues as benevolence, wisdom, trustworthiness, straightforwardness, courage, and firmness. Further, Confucius takes benevolence and nobility as characteristic of human being. Particular attention is paid to the distinction and relationship between virtuous characters and virtuous actions.     

The effects of classroom teaching on students' self-efficacy for personal development

The personal development of students is an essential component of school guidance and counselling programmes, but no published research on guidance and counselling has investigated the effects of regular classroom teaching on students' self-efficacy for personal development. In this study, questionnaire items were constructed to measure classroom teaching, student self-efficacy for personal development and student use of deep learning strategies. Data were collected from 16,208 secondary school students in Hong Kong. Using structural equation modelling, regular classroom teaching was found to have a direct effect on personal development self-efficacy as well as an indirect effect through student use of deep learning strategies. Implications of these findings for implementing a whole-school approach to guidance and counselling are discussed.     

Fractal growth of graphite nodules in iron

It has been found from a large number of statistical tests that graphite nodules in malleable iron grow with time according to a power law. The growth of the nodules and their fractal dimension have been investigated experimentally as a function of annealing time. Based on the assumption of carbon-diffusion-controlled growth in the initial stage, the growth equation is R _G = K ₁ t ^1/(D-1), where R _G is the radius of the graphite nodules, t the time, D the fractal dimension and K ₁ a constant. Assuming cementite-dissolution-controlled growth in the later stages of growth, the relation is R _G = K ₃ t ^3/D , where K ₃ is a constant. The fractal dimension, or the aggregate state of the graphite nodules, strongly influences the growth process.     

Development of Family Therapy in Hong Kong

This paper provides an insight into the development and growth of family therapy in Hong Kong. Family therapy was introduced in Hong Kong in the early 1980s and is now gaining ground. The authors give a historical account of the development of family therapy in Hong Kong, and report on its progress and achievement for the past three decades there. The field has gone through several stages of development. The 1980s were marked by an importation of Western family therapy models, during which overseas expertise was tapped to promote family therapy. The 1990s were characterized by a blossoming of different schools of family therapy on the local scene. Most schools established their own practice centers, and training packages were tailor-made for local use. The 2000s were an important era of family therapy development in Hong Kong. The field has nurtured a new generation of leaders (both academics and front-line practitioners and trainers) who play an essential role in advancing its development. The paper concludes by identifying problems in clinical practice, professional training, and research and knowledge development, and proposes ways of overcoming these difficulties.     

Characterizing the Musical Phenotype in Individuals With Williams Syndrome

Williams Syndrome (WS), a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder, is characterized by peaks and valleys in mental function: substantial impairments in cognitive domains such as reasoning, arithmetic ability, and spatial cognition, alongside relatively preserved skills in social domains, face processing, language, and music. We report the results of a comprehensive survey on musical behaviors and background administered to the largest sample of individuals with WS to date (n = 118, mean age = 20.4), and compare the results to those obtained from a control group of typically developing normal individuals (n = 118, mean age = 20.9) and two groups of individuals with other neurodevelopmental genetic disorders, Autism (n = 30, mean age = 18.2) and Down Syndrome (n = 40, mean age = 17.2). Individuals with WS were found to be rated higher in musical accomplishment, engagement, and interest than either of the comparison groups, and equivalent on most measures to the control group. Compared to all other groups including the controls, the WS individuals displayed greater emotional responses to music, manifested interest in music at an earlier age, and spent more hours per week listening to music. In addition, the effects of music listening (whether positive or negative) tended to last longer in the WS group. A factor analysis extracted seven principal components that characterize the musical phenotype in our sample, and discriminant function analysis of those factors was able to successfully predict group membership for the majority of cases. We discuss the neurobiological implications of these findings.     

Aspirant Sage or Dysfunctional Seer? Cognitive Dissonance and Pastoral Vulnerability in the Profile of Daniel

Employing a psychological lens and using the “I”-Window as a port of entry, this essay focuses on uncovering the internal profile of Daniel through his first-person visionary report (Dan 7–12). Incorporating a three-world reading strategy, I intentionally foreground the juxtaposition between the world of the text and the world in front of the text (the community of pastors). The idea of cognitive dissonance emerges as I compare the “private Daniel” with the “public Daniel” through textual construction. As a demonstrated example of the “empirics” of engaging text emotively, I seek to appropriate the internal turmoil of Daniel as a result of the impact of the exotic visionary experience upon him to the vulnerability of the pastoral vocation.     

叶法善道法简析

道教发展至唐代出现兴盛之势,这与李唐统治者对道教的重视和支持密切相关,但另一方面,自隋朝统一南北之后,道教各派间得以更广泛的交流也是原因之一。如卿希泰先生主编的《中国道教史》指出:"隋的统一打破了地域分割,为融合进一步创造了条件。唐承隋而继续推进融合,带来了道教的繁荣兴盛。"     

Accuracy in parameter estimation for targeted effects in structural equation modeling: sample size planning for narrow confidence intervals

In addition to evaluating a structural equation model (SEM) as a whole, often the model parameters are of interest and confidence intervals for those parameters are formed. Given a model with a good overall fit, it is entirely possible for the targeted effects of interest to have very wide confidence intervals, thus giving little information about the magnitude of the population targeted effects. With the goal of obtaining sufficiently narrow confidence intervals for the model parameters of interest, sample size planning methods for SEM are developed from the accuracy in parameter estimation approach. One method plans for the sample size so that the expected confidence interval width is sufficiently narrow. An extended procedure ensures that the obtained confidence interval will be no wider than desired, with some specified degree of assurance. A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted that verified the effectiveness of the procedures in realistic situations. The methods developed have been implemented in the MBESS package in R so that they can be easily applied by researchers.